Seeking Behemoth: Day 3: Today's lesson: wildlife!

Our view of Ashfall from the top of the hill.

Spent some time yesterday evening on the phone. Now, to get signal here, you have to hike to the top of the hill outside the cabins. Sunset here is late in relationship to back home. The top of the hill offers a beautiful view of the park, and despite reports of a lot of ticks there, neither I nor Ellen have found any after spending a fair bit of time there. However, there was this one deep sound that we were really freaked out by, because we had never heard anything like it before. Being nervous girls, our first thought was mountain lion. Then we started thinking it was a deer.

We started talking to Mike about the wildlife around here today. It turns out that the park is just out of range of any venomous snake, and despite the range maps that I found in my research before coming here none have ever been spotted in the park. I did go with three of the others today to explore some of the paths after work. There was one small snake that two of us stepped right over, and it started jumping around behind us. But there are a lot of birds and I have binoculars. It makes for a pretty nice hike. There are a lot of woodpeckers visible, and a fair number of other species that we were able to identify with the help of a book one of the guys brought along. We keep hearing night hawks, which turns out to be what we heard last night! Thank goodness only one snake here hates us so far. There are also a lot of big holes around that are closed in, and I'm suspecting a badger of being the culprit. I'm not sure what else would be that size.

We went out later in the day to see the night hawk, and with the help of a bird book to know what it looked like and the sound it made, we saw a few and managed to get a couple of pictures of them.

Of course, you aren't reading this because you're interested in the nature of Nebraska. There are FOSSILS here, after all.

Well, I actually got to walk out on the ash bed today. I started working on some bones that they started to uncover last year but didn't have time to pursue. There is also a lot of plant material and even tracks and coprolites preserved.

I find it interesting how many places I have been that have all of these things in one place, despite the fact that I was taught that different preservational environments are required for each. And yet it happens. One special thing about the preservation here is that ash doesn't compress like clay does, so unlike fish from the green river the bones aren't paper thin. Most of them aren't even bent out of shape. But they aren't really mineralized either. I really want to know what is going on with the fossilization here. Are they really fossilized? What is special about this ash that there were fossils, when in other deep ash layers none are found? I suspect that it has something to do with the water hole. The ash is found in other places, but still with no fossils. It is really tempting me to try experimenting with it, just not sure that I'm confident enough in my chemistry to do it right. It would be an interesting project though, and we may be able to figure out from there where else to look. Mike says that with so many animals at the hole it is unlikely that there was another one available: they would've had to come from miles for the grasslands to support them. So a dry environment. Interesting.

There are so many paths and activities that you don't see initially when you drive up. There is a microfossil sifting station that we can run, paths, a "heritage center" that teaches more about the geology of the area, and just so much that honestly it is incredible that you ever see anyone; I feel like a huge school group could show up, disperse, and we could be in one place and maybe, just maybe, see one person. Its just so much bigger of a park than I expected.